For the benefit of a friend, I am wondering if you can help me supply the pali terms and the provenances of "deathless" and "unborn". I'm very certain that they are both synonyms for Nibbana, but I'm not 100 percent certain, and I would like to know the textual contexts in which they can be cited.Thanks for your kind assistance!metta

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

For the benefit of a friend, I am wondering if you can help me supply the pali terms and the provenances of "deathless" and "unborn". I'm very certain that they are both synonyms for Nibbana, but I'm not 100 percent certain, and I would like to know the textual contexts in which they can be cited.Thanks for your kind assistance!metta

My recently moved Blog, containing some of my writings on the Buddha Dhamma, as well as a number of translations from classical Buddhist texts and modern authors, liturgy, etc.: Huifeng's Prajnacara Blog.

Thank you very much for that extract from the PTS dictionary. I think we were looking at the same page at the same time!Given the definition you have given me, is it possible the terms 'deathless' and 'unborn' are English poetic euphemisms with no close correspondents in the Pali or sanskrit?metta

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Monks, there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-compounded. -- F.L. Woodward

There exists, monks, that in which there is no birth, where nothing has come into existence, where nothing has been made, where there is nothing conditioned. -- P. Masefield

(The last two are from translation published by the Pali Text Society.)

So, what the heck does this passage mean? The problem, of course, with translations such as these is that it suggests there is some thing that exists. As Rahula states in WHAT THE BUDDHA TAUGHT: Nibbana IS.

What these translations (outside of the Masefiled’s odd effort) fail to get across is that the four “un/not” words are in Pali adjectives. The noun is unstated. There is what? There is what that is ajaata.m, etc? The Masefield translation attempts to deal with issue.

As mysterious as Udana 80 sounds, context gives a look at what the text is about. The immediate context, the sutta opens:

Thus have I heard. At one time the Lord was staying near Savatthi in the Jeta Wood at Anathapindika's monastery. On that occasion the Lord was instructing, rousing, inspiring, and gladdening the bhikkhus with a Dhamma talk connected with Nibbana, and those bhikkhus, being receptive and attentive and concentrating the whole mind, were intent on listening to Dhamma. Then, on realizing its significance, the Lord uttered on that occasion this inspired utterance: There is, bhikkhus, a not-born….

What we see right off the top is that the subject is nibbana. There is what? Nibbana. The four adjective modify, describe nibbana. So in the forms we have them above or in variations they are used to describe or characterize nibbana or are synonyms of nibbana.

The most straightforward definition the Buddha gives of Nibbana is:

That which is the destruction of greed, hatred and delusion is nibbana. -- S.N. IV 251 and IV 321

And we see:

That which is the destruction of greed, hatred and delusion is asankhata. -- S.N. IV 359 and S.N. 362

Clearly nibbana and asankhata are equivalent terms, synonyms. Nibbana is asankhata, “unconditioned,” because there is no further conditioning - sankhata - by hatred, greed and ignorance. The prefix "a" in asankhata is just like the English (Latin/Greek) prefix a as in, for example, asexual, without sexual characteristics, free of sexual characteristics. (And before a vowel, just as in English the Pali/Sanskrit privative abecomes an as in anatta/anatama.)

The privative a in Sanskrit/Pali needs not be, as unfortunately it so often is, limited to being translated as "un," "not," or "non." Asankhata, unconditioned, can be translated as free from conditions (of hatred, greed, and ignorance), without conditions, or, conditionlessness.

One of things that is often said is that nibbana is "the Unborn." Let us look at that usage where ajaata and nibbana are clearly synonytms:

Then the group of five monks, being thus exhorted, thus instructed by me [the Buddha], being liable to birth because of self, having known the perils in what is liable to birth, seeking the unborn [jaata.m], the uttermost security from the bonds -- nibbana -- won the unborn, the uttermost security from the bonds -- nibbana...." -- from the PTS translation of the Majjhima Nikaya I 173

What is the "unborn?" What does it mean? Try this:

”Then the group of five monks, being thus exhorted, thus instructed by me [the Buddha], being liable to birth because of self, having known the perils in what is liable to birth, seeking freedom from birth, the uttermost security from the bonds -- nibbana -- won freedom from birth, the uttermost security from the bonds -- nibbana...."

Here we have a clarity in language and a symmetry of language - that is, being liable to birth and being free from birth. The privative prefix a, as in ajaata.m, indicates the opposite. If I am liable to an obligation I do not want, then what I am looking for is freedom from the obligation I do not want.

Freedom from birth is a common theme of the Buddha:

Through not seeing the Four Noble Truths,Long was the weary path from birth to birth.When these are known, removed is rebirth's cause,The root of sorrow plucked; then ends rebirth. DN ii 91

With firm resolve, guard your own mind!Whoso untiringly pursues the Dhamma and the DisciplineShall go beyond the round of births and make an end of suffering. DN ii 123

"Destroyed is birth; the higher life is fulfilled; nothing more is to be done, and beyond this life nothing more remains." DN ii 153 (Walshe’s translations.)

One does not seek the “unborn”; one seeks freedom from birth/rebirth.

All four of the adjectives -- ajaata.m [unborn], abhuuta.m [unproduced], akata.m, [unmade], asankhata.m have to do with putting together.

Knowing the destruction of the formations [sankhara], you will know freedom from the made [akata]. -- Dhp 383

Of that which is born [jaata.m], come into being [bhuuta.m], compounded [sa.nkhata.m], and subject to decay, how can one say: 'May it not come to dissolution!'?" DN ii 144 Walshe

Why is that? Because he has known that delight is the root of suffering & stress, that from coming-into-being there is birth[jaati], and that for what has come into being [bhuutassa]there is aging & death. -- MN i 6 Ven. Bodhi

.

++++++++++++++++This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

There is freedom from birth, freedom from becoming, freedom from making, freedom from conditioning. If there were not this freedom from birth, freedom from becoming, freedom from making, freedom from conditioning, then escape from that which is birth, becoming, making, conditioning, would not be known here. -- Ud 80

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireas na daoine.People live in one another’s shelter.

Thank you TiltMy friend is a poet, so he'll appreciate the subtle nuances of usage that you have teased out.Great effort! Thanks again!Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

---The trouble is that you think you have time------Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe------It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725